Motivation in Grammar and the Lexicon

“As Ronald Langacker observes, in his contribution to this volume, it is difficult to come up with a precise and generally accepted characterization of motivation. Rather, he claims, the notion is best apprehended through detailed case studies, which examine the extent to which the structural aspects of the phenomena under discussion can be related to what are essentially non-linguistic aspects of cognition -- matters such as perception, attention, sensori-motor experience, embodiment, and cultural practices -- while still acknowledging the language-specific idiosyncrasies of usage conventions. The present volume offers just such a collection of studies. The chapters cover a wide range of topics in word structure, systems of tense, aspect, and modality, and diverse syntactic constructions, as well as processes of grammaticalization, in a number of European and East Asian languages. The collection not only offers a valuable overview of research to date, it will undoubtedly stimulate researchers to pursue the research agenda articulated by the editors in their introduction to the volume.”

“Much contemporary research in Cognitive Linguistics demonstrates the centrality of motivation as a theoretical construct in the description of natural language. Panther and Radden bring together an important collection of papers which makes a compelling case for this contention. The papers collectively demonstrate the ways in which grammar and lexicon are motivated by socio-cultural and embodied experience. This book is a landmark volume in motivation research.”

“[...] this collection of fourteen opening chapter constitute a real update of the field. It is must-read for all linguists who are working in this area and for any researcher or student who wants to familiarize him- or herself with the topic.”